Thursday, May 03, 2007

To Demonstrate Or Not to Demonstrate?

...And his heart was hardened.

Just when we think that maybe Olmert will get the message (with a whopping 2.3% approval rating) that we, the people, want him to RESIGN, he does a quick about-face, spits in our face (again), and high-fives his advisers after scaring the daylights of out his party's MKs.

Kadima is backing Olmert, and he's not resigning.

Tonight in Tel Aviv a demonstration is planned against Olmert.

Having gone to countless demonstrations, I know that governments rarely care about them anymore. The last Prime Minister who cared about a demonstration was Menachem Beigin, who cared about the "Leave Lebanon" demonstration during the Peace for Galilee war in the 1980s.

Since then, no one cares.

Rabin didn't care when we packed the streets with hundreds of thousands demonstrating against the dangers of Oslo.

Sharon didn't care when we linked Gush Katif to Jerusalem by a human chain, and hundreds of thousands demonstrated at the Kotel and in Tel Aviv.

So why should Olmert care about tonight's planned demonstration?

I received 2 emails about this today:

I am not completely sure I understand why any of us are even considering going to this event. Don’t get me wrong - Olmert must go but not by himself. Kadima must follow. All this event will cause is the replacement of one arrogant corrupt and misguided leader with another probably much worse than him. If this was a demonstration "for" I would feel differently but I have already learned that in this country demonstrating "against" is a dangerous proposition.

Oh did I forget to mention who the "organizer" of this event is? Does the name Uzi Dayan ring a bell? When Rabin hesitated it was Dayan who gave him the "confidence" that militarily Oslo was a good idea. As assistant to the chief of staff he gave his blessing to Baraks ingenious idea of running away from Lebanon and in the process leaving a vacuum that was filled by the Chizballah. We lose no matter what. If the event is successful - This radical left wing personality is upgraded, if the event fails Kadima and Olmert get stronger.

Have we lost our minds? I can go on and on about this but you probably get the point by now.

As I said before Lose-Lose-Lose-Lose. So why are we going?

And the following:

"The media does not want to see religious people or settlers at "their" demonstration.... They want to get rid of Olmert but keep his evil design to kick out us Jews from our homes.

I encourage everyone who can make it tonight to make our voice heard. May Mashem be with his people and may Hashem's people be with him."

12 comments:

I have that dilemma too. The first is the opinion of Baruch Marzel. The second is the popular opinion.

BTW, I have no idea who is going to this. Everyone I speak is not sure if they are going, at best. If they are sure, it is that they are not going. Some won't go because what's the point - Olmert does not care about Hafganot. He will not resign anyway so it is a waste of time. Others won't go so that it will not look like a "ketumim" event - a settler "Orange" event. if too many religious people are there, they think it will look "Orange" and lose its strength.

Maybe it is time to let other people protest for a bit. I am actually enjoying watching the proceedings of the student protest. If you thought the police/govt were against settlers, you were wrong. You now know that they are against everybody who thinks differently than their own agenda.

Yidn don't go! The more we go to these events the more we loose track of the fact that it's Hashem who's running the show. We think we can actually make a difference about yishuv haaretz by demonstrating, voting, etc. It's not true!!! Yishuv haaretz depends on things like shmirat habrit, tzedakka, mishpat, all the things mentioned in Torah and Chazal in connection to yishuv haaretz. Demonstrations and voting are there just to create confusion - just think about when Sharon was elected by people like us...If you want to do something productive, keep building outposts, use avoda ivrit, be makpid on tzniut, etc... These things really make something real, demonstrations just increase traffic...

I and most of my extended family are going. I'm going for the same reason that I attended previous demonstrations, and the same reason I trekked 38 kilometers through the Negev tryinbg to enter Gush Katif - with every step I take I give witness before my fellow men but most importantly before the Kadosh Baruch Ho what is important to me!

We didn't go, but we tend not to go to demos in Kikar Malchei Yisrael. And we also don't feel they do much. But I have to admit the idea of making sure that frum Jews are there speaks to me.This demo didn't interest us for some reason. Maybe I like Chomesh better than Tel Aviv?

The demonstration fools us into thinking that we can make a difference. The bottom line is that we only make some kind of difference when there are elections. In order for there to be elections, it'll take the Knesset to bring the government down. And that's not going to happen, because most of them fear for their jobs if there are elections right now.